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Thursday, 23 March 2017

Here is a short prose poem by Shae Davies. Shae is a second year student at Leicester, studying Creative Writing. She writes: "Soon turning 20, I've been thinking a lot about myself at 17. Naive, lost and a bit out of place."

Growing UpI didn’t know myself then, back when I was seventeenAnd my coats were longer than my skirtsI thought I knew the world,Thought I knew what the world wanted from meBut when I looked at myself in the mirrorI wasn’t sure who was looking backAnd when I looked out at the world,I wasn’t sure if anyone was looking back

Monday, 20 March 2017

On Friday 3rd March Leicester Cathedral became a gateway to an alternate universe, a place where hidden treasure was discovered, where angels fell to earth, where wooden carvings began to talk.

As part of the BBC Storytelling Festival over 100 children from local schools joined lecturers, tutors and writers from the University of Leicester’s School of Arts for a Flash Fiction workshop. Using objects and artefacts all around the cathedral as inspiration, the young people wrote their own flash fiction (or very short stories) and shared their work to applause from the rest of the crowd.

Here is a story inspired by the Ypres Cross in the Cathedral:The Ypres Cross

I visit the cathedral every week. I come to see the Ypres cross, to touch the glass that covers it, keeps it safe.

The broken beads wound around the crucifix remind me of the beads my grandmother used to wear. She wore them for special occasions: for nights she wanted to feel beautiful. She looped the string around her throat and they looked pale against the dark blue of her blouse.

Next she added colour to her cheeks, lipstick to her mouth. She knew her own face well and did this with precision. Later, she slipped a shawl over her shoulders, stepped out to dance with her friends.

My grandmother doesn’t wear her beads anymore. She cannot walk, doesn’t have the strength to lift her legs. She spends her days in bed now, dying slowly from something they cannot cure.

Sometimes she asks me to put powder across her cheeks, to fetch a mirror so she can see. She tells me how she loves to dance and she asks me for her beads.

When I tell her that the beads are broken, that she cannot dance tonight, she begins to cry.I wipe her tears with my hand, say I love her, but she looks confused. My grandmother doesn’t know who I am. She doesn’t remember me. But she remembers her beads. How they felt cool on her neck and how they moved against the dark blue of her blouse as she danced.

Thursday, 16 March 2017

The MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester joined together with Literary Leicester today to bring us an inspiring masterclass presented by Bali Rai.

Bali Rai was born in Leicester. He grew up in a multi-cultural, multiracial community, an experience that has had a definite influence on his writing. His first book was the best selling (Un)Arranged Marriage and he went on to become one of the UK's most successful YA authors. Today we were given a glimpse into his writing world, a chance to see how he has become so successful in his craft.Bali Rai's enthusiasm was infectious."All humans are nosey parkers," he told us. We must make sure that our audience wants to know more. We must elicit in them first sympathy and then empathy for our characters. Throughout the afternoon he kept bringing us back to this point, to considering who our audience is when we are writing. How we can connect with the audience became his mantra.He stressed how important it is to analyse each section, each paragraph. Every sentence needs to be there for a reason. If it doesn't have a reason then get rid of it and make sure all the content will connect with the audience. How well do we know our characters? He asks his characters questions about their habits, desires, emotions. Only when he knows the characters really well can he portray them in a three-dimensional way. Only then will they connect with the audience.He dropped in many pieces of advice as he spoke, sharing lessons that he had learnt from experience. The beginning of a novel is the hardest and most important to get right. Character is more important than setting. If you find yourself staring at a blank screen then turn it off and take a break. And yes, as a writer he believes in ghosts. Why be rational? You're a creative writer! "Everything comes back to connection with the audience," he reminded us and he practiced what he preached. For this afternoon we were his audience and he certainly connected with us. We were with him all the way.By Rosalind Adam, first published here.

Monday, 13 March 2017

They were having their free meal at City of Sanctuary as they always do on Wednesdays. I was going from table to table to remind them about our creative writing workshop. Some were playing ping-pong, one was having a head massage, they were chatting, asking where they can go to learn English, in one corner others were picking up donated clothes and cans of beans or just staring. There were about eighty people there, in the refugee centre, and I was asked to go along to the workshop with ten. Up at the University of Leicester, MA students were waiting for us.‘You coming for the writing workshop today, Mohammed?’

‘What writing, my teacher?’

‘At the uni, my good child…’‘Ah, at the uni… My teacher, you look like Mr Bean.’‘I know. After the workshop we’re going for a meal out in a real restaurant.’‘OK, I coming.’I moved to the next table, explained what the workshop was about. ‘…and then after the restaurant we are going to see teacher Jess. She runs a poetry thing called “Find the Right Words.”’ I moved to another table, explained, told them that it was going to be a long but fun day out, and they took the piss because I got too stressed, and we laughed. And with Maggie, a tireless volunteer at City of Sanctuary, we gathered fifteen refugees and asylum seekers, and started to make our way up New Walk. On the way to the uni, three guys were telling me how they made their way from their far away countries to the UK. ‘I came in the back of a lorry, in the fridge.’ ‘What cargo was in the fridge?’ ‘Meat.’ ‘My lorry was a chocolate fridge.’ ‘Ah now that’s nice … How many of you were in the fridge?’ ‘Twenty-five. Sometimes we had to stay inside for a whole day.’ ‘Sorry to ask this, but I always wondered, when you wanted to go to the toilet, what did you do?’ ‘We had a Coca-Cola bottle. We passed it around.’ ‘And if you wanted to do the other thing?’ ‘You don’t do the other thing.’ ‘My lorry wasn’t a fridge. It was open. It carried logs.’ We reached the university building, Maurice Shock. Corinne Fowler was there, she welcomed us and we made it to the classroom. Ten MA students were ready to deliver a creative writing workshop to the refugees. Sonia and Kassie had already come down to the City of Sanctuary once to get a feeling of the place and meet the refugees. Azra and Lauren had emailed me to ask what type of exercises they should be doing. And I work in the same building with Will. He works in the café and sometimes brings me the leftover sausage rolls: ‘Here, Alex, take these six sausage rolls and tell me, we’re thinking of doing this and this and this and this exercise with the refugees. What do you think?’ ‘Oh man that’s very kind of you.’ ‘You like them?’ ‘They are lovely. Well, now this exercise sound good… yiam yiam yiam ah oh ah…’Now, enough with that waffling on. I was asked by Jonathan Taylor to write a piece about my experience of the writing workshop delivered by his MA students. All right, Jonathan, I’ll tell you what I remember. I remember that your students were kind to the refugees; I remember how worried they were to make the refugees feel welcome. They were thoughtful – did you know they brought their own biscuits and crisps and drinks for the refugees? I saw tiredness in their faces, it was the good, sweet type of tiredness, it’s the tiredness that I see in people when they worry and care. Those who led the workshop worried about what the refugees would think of them, they saw them as they really are, equals, humans who, like you and me, can judge. The rest of your students who sat by the refugees helped and cared, they tried to explain what this and that exercise was about, and when the refugees with their poor English didn’t understand, your students didn’t give up, they tried again. And the refugees enjoyed it, they told me so later, they said, ‘We really liked it, Mr Bean, are we going there again?’ Job done, back to waffling now. The workshop finished and we left. We had some time to kill until the restaurant. We went to the university library, I showed them around, they found the big old books, they opened them, turned their pages carefully. We had more time to kill. It was raining heavily outside and we went to the library café. Maggie bought us coffee and tea, then we went to see Corinne again, in the Charles Wilson building. She had invited us to her salsa dance class. We danced, even I danced, but we had to go again, and the rain still came down hard. We took the bus to town, another bus to Narborough Road, had our dinner in a Turkish restaurant. We talked and ate, took photos and laughed, and the person who sat next to me, an Afghan bloke, said that this was the best meal he had for years:

‘Thank you, Alex. I feel like I’m with my family.’‘Don’t thank me, I’m not paying for this.’‘Who’s paying?’‘No-one is paying. Get ready to grab your coat. We’re doing a runner.’‘A runner?’‘Can you help, Fatima?’ ‘Which one is Fatima?’ ‘The pregnant one. I’ll carry Aisha’s baby.’ ‘No problem.’ ‘No, actually, I'm joking, it’s Writing East Midlands that pays.’ ‘Who are they?’‘They are Aimee and Henderson and Heather and some other people that I don’t know.’‘Tell them I thank them.’Did you hear, Aimee, Henderson and Heather and some other people that I don’t know? That Afghan bloke wants to thank you.We left again, went to the Western Pub, Upstairs at the Western, we saw Jess Green. She was the Lead Writer on the writing project with the refugees and asylum seekers, Write Here: Sanctuary. The place was packed, many people read their stuff, and so did two of our people, two refugees, after crossing country after country hiding for months inside lorries, they stood up there, in a small pub in Leicester, they stood up to read their poetry.

In the links below, you can read some poems and an article by Malka, an asylum seeker from Iraq.Letter to SantaI’m Human

About the writerAlexandros Plasatis is an ethnographer who writes fiction in English, his second language. In 2014 he was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing. His stories have or are due to appear in Overheard: Stories to Read Aloud, Unthology, Crystal Voices, blÆkk and Total Cant, and his academic article on how to undertake ethnography and turn it into fiction will be published in the next volume of Short Fiction in Theory and Practice. He lives in Leicester and is a volunteer at City of Sanctuary, where he aims to find and develop new creative writing talent within the refugee and asylum seeker community.

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This blog features work in progress, articles, reviews, links and reflection by Ph.D students, MA students, BA students, graduates and staff at the university and in the wider community. If you'd like to get in contact with us about the blog, please email us at creativewritingatleicester@gmail.com.